This invention relates to a device for winding or unwinding wire onto or off of a spool. The invention is particularly useful in laying down or picking up electric fence wire in a ranch or farm environment.
It is known to carry fence wire or communication wire on a truck or off-road vehicle, as described, e.g. in U.S. Pat. No. 3,070,324 to K. Bryman or U.S. Pat. No. 4,946,113 to Riffle et al. The vehicle is driven slowly over the terrain while a spool of wire is rotated at a controlled rate to either wind the wire onto the spool or unwind the wire from the spool. The wire-unwind action occurs naturally as an incident to the vehicle motion, without any power input to the spool. the wire-winding action requires a power input to the spool, e.g. manual operation of a hand crank or electric operation of a motor.
The present invention concerns a relatively simple low cost mechanism for mounting the spool and its operating mechanism on the rear end of a conventional pickup truck. The operating mechanism is supported on a horizontal platform that has a downwardly extending post structure disposed for insertion into one of the stake pockets in the side wall of the truck cargo box. A horizontal axis bearing means is located on the platform for rotatably supporting a horizontal shaft that extends transversely across the cargo box side wall; one end of the shaft is located within the cargo box, and the other end of the shaft is located outboard from the cargo box. A spool of wire is supported on the outboard end of the shaft. A shaft-operating means is connected to the inboard end of the shaft. The shaft-operating means can be a hand crank or an electric motor. A person sitting in the cargo box can control the spool motion.